Oct
JSW Financial Defendant Sentenced to Prison for Real Estate Investment Fraud
Edward G. Locker, 37, one of the defendants in the JSW Financial Inc. real estate fraud prosecution, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for his role in defrauding investors.
Co-defendants Richard F. Tipton, 62, was sentenced last month to 18 months in prison and James W. Ward, the principal defendant, got 5 years.
David Lin, 44, the only person charged who went to trial, was found guilty on 17 counts by a jury and sentenced to 28 months in prison.
Mountain View-based JSW Financial (formerly known as Jim Ward & Associates Inc. (JWA)) was a hard money lender that solicited money from people to purchase fractional interests in loans they made to borrowers to build residential homes. Investors were also given the “opportunity” to invest in the Blue Chip Realty Fund LLC (Blue Chip) and Shoreline Investment Fund LLC (Shoreline).
All the defendants had been charged with 18 counts alleging conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1349, 1341, and 1343. For the three that had entered guilty please, they admitted that their representations to investors that JWA and JSW generated claiming that Blue Chip and Shoreline wrote and invested in loans that were secured by deeds of trust on real property were completely false.
Read the press release on the FBI.gov.
